Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

Access Criminology and Criminal Justice journals now

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
Social & Legal Studies
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Right arrow Citing Articles via Scopus
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Osterlund, K.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Complore   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati   Add to Twitter  
What's this?

Love, Freedom and Governance: Same-Sex Marriage in Canada

Katherine Osterlund

York University, Canada

Recent developments in Canadian marital jurisprudence require that we ask: what if love could be mobilized as a technology of power? In this article I propose such an analysis. I establish a recent discursive shift in the meaning of marriage in law, amounting to what I will call a `normalizing love discourse'. I argue that this process of transformation reflects a broader synthesis within liberal governance of freedom, aspiration, feeling and the exercise of power. The shift has operated in two ways: marriage is now defined by love (and the state's sanction of it), and second, love among heterosexuals or among lesbians or gay men has been rendered legally equivalent for the purpose of marriage law. I then draw upon accounts of neo-liberalism to suggest several lines of inquiry that may be fruitful for developing a critical analysis of legal love discourse. I argue that love is being opened as a space for and method of governance, at the paradoxical moment of its (re)privatization in/as marriage.

Key Words: governmentality • Halpern • jurisprudence • liberal governance • love • neo-liberalism • same-sex marriage

Social & Legal Studies, Vol. 18, No. 1, 93-109 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0964663908100335
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati   Add to Twitter Twitter    What's this?